Follow the Fader

Kenneth Anger Opening at PS1

It's easy to spend a winter Sunday lazily lounging about watching movies and PS1 seems to have had that in mind with their new Kenneth Anger retrospective which opened fittingly last Sunday. New Yorkers treasure their weekend days for a bit of respite and they could find it at this show. There’s nothing lazy, or even particularly relaxing, about the films—Anger’s work is always at least a little abrasive—but the space itself was a warm, dark cavern, every square foot upholstered with blood red fabric and only a few low-hanging bulbs to provide dim light. As movies played on massive projection screens scattered throughout the room, people sat and laid about to watch, an unusual scenario for those accustomed to walking around museums instead of lounging in them. But it worked, because it did what too many video installations fail to do: it allowed people to comfortably watch the films from beginning to end. And people did. As each movie started up successively, people migrated from one screen to the next. By the time Anger’s "Scorpio Rising” began, a film about James Dean-esque bikers with black motorcycle jackets, cuffed blue jeans, and late ’50s attitude, set to girl group shoo wopping, it felt more like a modern, artful version of a drive-in theater than a typical museum opening. We took some snaps of the films, check them after the jump.